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SEIA is the solar energy industry’s go-to source for the latest coverage on solar power, including U.S. and international policy, research and polls, business and financing trends, and more. Our staff strives to support the media covering solar energy issues and guide our members on effective media outreach with clear statements, background materials, news and multimedia resources.

SEIA is committed to informing policymakers, the media, and the American public about the benefits of solar energy for today’s communities, our economy, and our country.

Illinois Rural Electric Cooperative held a ribbon cutting for its new 500 kilowatt solar facility which is located south of Winchester on Illinois Route 106, next to one of the substations that serves the cooperative’s 7,800 members. The installation is the first utility-scale photovoltaic solar energy system by a cooperative in Illinois.

While Americans know wind and solar energy are clean, they often aren’t aware of the economic success story behind these renewable-energy technologies. Wind and solar power have economic benefits that reach far and wide. They have become increasingly affordable, attracting billions in private development, and today are both mainstream and reliable energy sources across America.

Calling it “a huge step backward,” Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said President Obama’s 2015 fiscal year budget, which was unveiled today, would severely damage the U.S. solar industry by eliminating the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and replacing it with a refundable Production Tax Credit (PTC) at the end of 2016.

A developer of wind and solar energy facilities will build a 900-acre generating station on grazing land about 2 miles southeast of Pueblo. Going into operation in summer 2016, the Comanche Solar project, near Xcel’s Comanche substation, would be Colorado’s largest solar farm and one of the biggest in the nation.

If the General Assembly wants to establish itself as the most business unfriendly, anti-jobs and anti-growth legislature in the nation, it will pass the recently filed bill oxymoronically titled the “Affordable and Reliable Energy Act.”

U.S. solar panel installations grew 76 percent in 2012 to 3.3 gigawatts, representing a tenth of the global market, led by large-scale projects in the desert southwest, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Partly driven by an oversupply of cheaper panels from China, the domestic solar market had its best year in 2012, with the growth in installations outpacing that of the global market, according to an annual report to be released Thursday.